


the best defense

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: dimension 20 [55]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, Crossing Off a Kill List, Dubious Morality, Fix-It, Friendship/Love, Gen, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Revenge, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Torture, Trust, wildly different tones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25603075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: Gustavo decidesHmm, fuck this actually, and fixes everything through the power of time travel and murder, mostly.
Relationships: Gustavo Uvano & Lazuli Rocks, Gustavo Uvano & The House of Rocks
Series: dimension 20 [55]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706107
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59





	1. lessons in regret

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is my baby. i love it so much. chapter title is from the hand that feeds by the crane wives

The darkness hums and Gustavo wonders how much more can be taken from him even in death.

He thinks of the strange veil of the afterlife rippling and looking through a clouded window as his beloved daughter holds a crystalline vial in her hand and pours it into his water as she walks into his room, tray of food in hand.

Thinks of watching his oldest friend be declared an oath breaker and a false king, watching him be trapped in a kill box and freed only by the bravery of a man Gustavo doesn’t know well enough to grieve for.

Thinks of a young and skilled and _young_ Duchess be nearly gutted in a storm, thinks of a young, well-meaning, _young_ Princess save her and in doing so save so much more.

Thinks of the long weeks of his Concord crumbling, the peace he’d spent his adult life straining to strengthen fall upon his death. The way the cloak of armistice had been shed with a speed that made him ache at his failure and burn at the world’s eagerness to be at war.

Thinks of watching his friends be tortured and trapped and betrayed and _betrayed_. Be driven from their home. To have their daughters taken from them.

Thinks of watching his own home, watching his own daughter. Watching her step aside and allow the world he created for her fall to ruin in the name of power she believes herself to deserve. (The worst is that even now, Gustavo can’t bring himself disagree.)

( _This is Fructera. I am dressed for court._ )

They are so close to a solution and he wishes he could do anything, say anything to help them. He watches them crown a queen in a fading monastery and pledge themselves to her and he is so, _so_ proud of how they’ve clawed their way here but he can’t stop the devastation piling in his heart at how _broken_ the world is.

The Imperator risen again but no longer content just to break the backs of his own people, the church burning out all that is sweet in the world, friends fractured into factions. 

Gustavo sees it and the heavy horror and aching failure and burning anger, they simmer in his soul and then young Ruby, eighteen and so _young_ , she stands in front of a being whose existence is somehow not the weirdest thing he’s watched the family of his oldest friend encounter, and ask, _Did you kill my sister?_

_Would you have come if she were still alive?_

It’s not Gustavo’s family. It’s not his country, or his legends, or his magic. It’s not even his world, anymore, truly only something he watches through a veil he doesn’t understand. And _yet_. 

The question, simple, easy, certain, asked so brightly from a being who does not understand the effects of what she has done in asking it, it breaks the tension of the simmering in his soul and something in Gustavo breaks and re-sets itself anew.

The darkness hums and hums and the humming becomes the only thing Gustavo can hear, and when he stands- had he been sitting, this whole time? This time, how much time has passed?- his joints do not ache or shake with weakness. 

He notices it like he notices the strain of pulling his bow in battle, which is to say it is noted and set aside for later processing, and the thing in Gustavo that has been broken and set is humming in tune with the darkness around him, and Gustavo spares one last glance for the Candian princess who has silently drawn her bow, and then he looks out into the darkness and closes his eyes.

He would wish them luck, in the fight to come, but somehow deep in his soul, he knows he will make sure that they never need it.

When Gustavo opens his eyes he does it standing, and before he can process anything other than a weight on his back (his bow. It has been two decades since he last used it and yet the faint scent of apple-wood and the faintest scrape of the bowstring against his neck is set into his senses so deeply-) he hears Amethar (his voice not as deep as he remembers, his voice still light with the presence of four living, breathing sisters; his closest friend still buoyant with young love and swimming joyfully through the waters of war. He hasn’t been drowned by the horrors, yet-) say, “Laz? What?”

Gustavo looks out from the company of archers he is standing at the front of (he’d insisted, in his youth, even though it was more tactically sound for him to be at the back. The archers in the front were at greater risk. Gustavo would not let his men stand where he was unwilling to set foot; foolish, he thinks. But right. As are many things.) and sees the magic still floating in the air around the Archmage Lazuli, who has suddenly appeared in the space between the two armies, standing with a valley in between them, seconds from starting their charge.

Oh, no. Gustavo is hit with the memory of this day with a violence that makes him stagger, and he is so far away. But Lazuli hadn’t sacrificed herself immediately. She’d had to cast the spell, first. She’d had to concentrate. There is time, precious little, not enough, but Gustavo Uvano is already sprinting, running faster and more desperately than he has _ever_ run.

He has barely processed the fact that he is running toward a woman he watched be buried. All he knows is that Lazuli’s death was the first in a domino line of tragedies, and he _cannot_ allow her to do this. He doesn't know what of her visions convinced her to do this, but no future she has foreseen could possibly be worse than the reality he has watched.

The magic she is casting is beginning to gather in the skies, and he is still so far away, and so he yells her name. 

She looks up, her eyes confused. Her hands don’t still from their work, but they do slow, and Gustavo pushes himself even faster. 

He yells for her to stop, and the confusion does not fade, but he watches her face harden in resolve. 

She turns away from him. Gustavo is still too far away. He’s _too far_. He has no time to explain. No time to convince her. Drastic measures are required. 

Oh, how he hopes his friend will forgive him (and that he is not smote by the Archmage’s power) for what he is about to do.

He takes his bow- unnamed, because Fructera does not share the Candian custom for naming weaponry- and even as he sprints, when he draws back the arrow, it is steady on its target. 

(There is a reason that of everyone on that battlefield, it was Gustavo Uvano who shot the arrow that killed the Imperator.)

The arrow is loosed, and even this far out he can hear the shouting from his troops. He has, after all, just shot an arrow at the Archmage Lazuli of Candia, with two armies as witness, and he’s currently drawing back another.

Just as he’d planned, the first flies close enough to her head to nick her ear, and she whips her head around, and as he looses his second arrow, her hand flies up on reflex.

The strange magical shield flickers into existence in front of her, and his arrow bounces. He’s glad, seeing as that was the one aimed at the muscle connecting her arm and shoulder.

He lowers his bow as he continues running, adrenaline pumping too heavily for the relief to flow through him properly. 

It worked. Her previous spell is dissipating from the sky. He’ll make it to her before she can re-cast the spell that will kill her. 

Now all he has to do is explain _why_ he just fired at her, and do so quickly and convincingly enough to get them both off the battlefield, and then explain his entire situation.

Simple.

He’d laugh at his hubris, if he weren’t skidding to a stop in front of the Archmage.

She is very tall. Gustavo had forgotten just how intimidating Archmage Lazuli was. Especially when you had the very, very rare experience of having every iota of her attention.

“You will explain your actions, and you will do it _now_ ,” she says, and Gustavo reaches for the mantle of Concordant Emperor. It’s made harder by the lack of air in his lungs, and the overwhelming urge to put his head between his legs and wheeze until he can breathe again, but unfortunately there is no time. 

“You were about to sacrifice yourself to bring down a hail of arrows, handing our side a bloodless victory. I don’t know what visions you saw that convinced you to do this, but had I let you, the world would see devastation the likes of which you can’t even _fathom_ , Lazuli. Archmage.” Gustavo winces slightly at his impropriety, but given the way Lazuli has just transitioned from coldly furious to intrigued and analyzing, he forgives himself for the slight. 

“Candia needs your power more than it needs your corpse. If you just come with me back behind our lines, I can explain all of this more in depth.”

Lazuli waves a hand, and the both of them disappear in a cloud of sweet-smelling magic. They reappear behind their main camp’s battlements, and she looks at him.

“I don’t know how, yet, but you’ve dabbled in magic even more powerful than my own. The fabric of time is ripped around you in a way that is so alien I can barely sense it, but I recognize the magic of time. You’re practically dripping with it. I would demand you come with me to Castle Candy immediately for study, but you have troops here. The future is clouded, I…”

Lazuli takes off her spectacles and pinches the bridge of her nose. This is the most- well, the most _casual_ Gustavo can ever remember seeing his friend’s sister, and the dissonance is jarring. 

“I foresaw _none_ of this. Not even in the most remote of futures I was shown. I have absolutely no idea what your presence here has changed. So. Go back to your troops. Fight this battle. And after, meet me here.”

Gustavo is left blinking, and he so desperately wants to sit down on the candy-grass and- cry. Yell. Scream. Give in to the bone deep exhaustion that is beginning to take root not only because of his sprint, but because of how steep the path ahead is. 

Amethar, standing an excommunicated, throneless oath breaker in a church. He thinks of Calroy standing on the battlements of Castle Candy, bloodied dagger in hand. Ciabatta, a silhouette in the dark, murdering a child. 

So much to do. So much to prevent, to explain.

He could play the game. He could slip back into the politics, do things the Fructeran way. But- Bulb above, where has the Fructeran way gotten them? A Concord so fragile it shatters before it can even really start? A Church so emboldened they’d declare a Holy War? 

No. Gustavo cannot allow these players to remain on the board. He will leave the subtlety to the Archmage and her sisters. 

It’s time for him to take a page out of Amethar’s book, and come at the problem angry, and with a very big sword. 

(Or in his case, a very heavy bow.)


	2. i name you my enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gustavo goes to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from dear wormwood by the oh hellos  
> tags & rating have been updated to reflect this chapter's contents- please read them! let me know if anything more needs to be tagged!

As much as he wants to, he can’t just kill Calroy. He is thankful for the decades of practice in Fructeran court, because after the battle (won- with casualties, and Gustavo wonders what he’s changed already, taking those people from the world, taking their legacies-) when he and Amethar and Calroy-

(Morris and Manta Ray weren’t, aren’t, here, he remembers. Tarthur had, has, called them home, for- for his daughter’s birth. The _strangeness_ of that fights with the memory he already has of this battle, of hugging a weeping Amethar tightly over his sister’s body-)

-sit together around the fire and talk and laugh, his smile looks as genuine as it always has. The memories hit him like waves, and the stories come to him naturally. After so much time, it feels natural to fall back into the rhythms of war. It’s wonderful and awful how much better it feels, compared to lying in bed, feeling himself wither away. 

He meets Lazuli the next day, and he explains.

He tells her: 

The war drags on and it takes the Rocks sisters one by one. It makes Amethar watch as the heavy crown draws closer until it weighs down his own shoulders on the same day he marries his sister’s wife. (When he tells her this, there is no change in her expression, but her eyes are pained and he is sorry to pass this weight onto her and grateful that his own load is lighter for it.)

He tells the Archmage about shooting down the Imperator and feeling nothing but a great, crashing, overwhelming wave of hope. About bringing his hopes for the world to bear, about shaping peace, about believing he was making the world a better place for his daughter, and perhaps, even, doing that. For a time.

He tells her about dying- slowly and deliberately and about watching the foundations of his peace, his concord, shake, and still hoping they’re strong enough to stand, and then seeing that they are not. 

Seeing _everything_ , understanding coming to him in a way he would have killed for when he was alive (and before his illness, he was no slouch at court.) Watching his daughter and her machinations, his eye being drawn to Amethar and his family. 

He tells her about her nieces and their bravery and their youth and Ruby’s magic and Jet’s dying words, and he is sorry to bring her this grief that she would otherwise be free of, and thankful that he doesn’t have to carry one family’s pain alone any longer. 

He recounts the discontent and the betrayal and the poison and the lies. He names the snakes that lie in wait and watches her commit them to memory. He explains the treachery and the righteousness and the loss. 

Hours pass and by the end of it, they sit together, two people heavy with knowledge. 

He tells her what he’s going to do. The people he’s going to kill, after finding enough proof of their treachery to make the cause of their deaths obvious. 

She disagrees, of course. The Archmage Lazuli of Candia has no love for politics, is well known for preferring the quiet academia of her tower, but she understands their value.

But Gustavo looks at her with the eyes of the Emperor, the eyes of a father murdered by his daughter, the eyes of someone who has one chance to save everything they’ve lost, and understands that he is not asking her permission, but her help to take care of those things not easily removed by an expertly aimed arrow.

“I will need to tell my sisters. Not all of it, but they will ask questions.”

“Of course, my Lady. I trust you to tell who you believe can be trusted.”

Lazuli nods. Gustavo nods back. 

She walks away, plans being created and revised and eliminated with the speed of the brightest magical mind in generations. 

He stands, alone, a plan to kill one of his closest and most trusted friends coming together with disturbing ease.

Calroy Cruller dies in the first month of spring, on the seventeenth day of Harvestbright.

_Gustavo breaks in through the window and does it silently. He doesn’t give Calroy the chance to plead or the chance to beg- he slits his throat with a dagger while he lies in bed._

_He throws the dagger into the Cola river afterwards, on his way down to Vegetania, and knows he did it this way not just to avoid hearing more of a traitor’s lies._

_(They were friends, once. As hard as he tries, he can’t look into that face and see nothing but a murdering traitor.)_

His death is grieved by the many people he was beloved by, until documents are discovered that lay his treachery bare. The rage of Amethar Rocks is legendary, when letters between Cruller and a Ceresian senator show the plans for an attempt on Sapphria’s life.

(In another world, Princess Sapphria Rocks, foremost diplomat of Candia, loved by everyone who met her and most people who never had, is called to a battlefield to help broker a ceasefire while both sides recover from several days of fighting. 

Before discussions can even truly begin, she is shot and killed by a misinformed archer, and any chance of a ceasefire is broken as she bleeds out on the ground. She has no opportunity to grab any of the daggers hidden on her person, and she takes many, many secrets to her grave.

The archer that killed her is never found, but the army they were a part of is slaughtered by their enemy- whose forces are led by a freshly bereaved Amethar.)

(In this world, Sapphria gets word of the designs on her life, and develops several dozen more contingency plans. In addition, on the advice of her sister, she acquires a ward of her own. One of her cousins, in fact, who she was put in touch with by Lazuli. 

Cumulous Rocks stands like a menacing, vaguely heretical shadow at court, and Sapphria gets an inordinate amount of joy from the fear his countenance brings. 

Amethar is glad to have a sparring partner who he both doesn’t have to go easy on and who won’t let him win.)

_One down._

Keradin Deeproot dies on the eighth day of Lowdawn, the first month of winter. He is shot and killed by an unknown assailant on the streets of Brightgarden. His murderer is never found. The sight of a paladin brought low in the very heart of the holiest city in Vegetania is a great blow to the Church, and the unmasking of Primogen Alfredi’s lies a few days later does nothing to steady the already shaken faith of the city’s residents.

_Gustavo doesn’t bother with stealth. He didn’t know Lapin Cadbury well enough to grieve him properly, and he hopes that the fear he’s incited would be enough to bring him peace. Of course, these are only his first moves against the Vegetanians._

_He doesn’t mind the church, so much. He doesn’t have the magic the Candians have- although recent events have made him think about the stories his mother told him to help him fall asleep. He wonders if the ghost stories might, perhaps, be more. But he is not the person for such things._

_He has no desire to bring the church to its knees. Belizabeth Brassica, however, is not the church._

_Perhaps once he is done, in the hands of someone like Saint Citrina, the Bulbian church could be the good thing it was meant to be._

_Two down._

Archbishop Belizabeth Brassica is killed on the first day of Brightdusk, as she stands on the dais of the Cathedral of Saint Arugula, seconds away from being named Pontifex. The arrow goes through her heart like it was called there, and as she collapses in a heap, surrounded by her holy walls and sycophants, and before she can be healed, three more arrows hit her, their speed blinding- one through her right eye, one through her left, and finally, one through the throat.

The Bulbian knights chase the assassin through the streets of Comida with a righteous fury, but they are never caught. They disappear with their bow into the depths of the city, and the Church is left with nothing but a body.

 _As they chase him through the city,_ his city _, Gustavo can’t help a triumphant yell. The orchestrator of tragedy dead, gone, eliminated. Her paladins chase him but Gustavo has walked these streets for decades, longer, even! He may not know them like he knows the winding alleys of Uvano, but it is a near thing. He leads them on a merry chase before deciding to disappear._

 _It’s hard to get out of Comida, but the challenge gives him a thrill he’s missed. Finally, he can breathe easily. Compared to maintaining the peace of nations who are making every effort to fall back into warring with each other, crossing off a kill list while his more than competent wife handles the affairs of Fructera is a_ vacation _, and one he thinks he rather deserves by now._

_Three down._

Augustus Ciabatta dies slowly, and violently, and personally, sometime during the first week of Highbright. His exact time of death is… impossible to determine, given the state of his body when it’s found. 

_She is not his daughter but Gustavo watched her die and watched his friend be powerless to stop it and had things gone differently- and they_ will, _this time- this is the man that murdered the girl who would be his niece, and so Gustavo gives him all the mercy he deserves. He gives Augustus Ciabatta a mere taste of what the Rocks family felt._

The unfortunate soldiers who find his body will recount their stories with shaking hands and even shakier voices. They will think of the stories they told each other as children, of the Hungry Ones that wait in the shadows to consume bad little children. They will wonder, and be afraid.

_Gustavo will nail his hands to the wall with his arrows so that when his blade meets bread the man who would call himself Imperator can’t flinch away. He won’t understand the fate he has been doomed to, and Gustavo will look at him and see nothing but a murderous snake who, in the Ceresian cycle of such things, got too hungry for its own good._

_Augustus will attempt anger and bravado and then silence and stoicism and then, after Gustavo has put his creativity to work, he will scream and beg and plead and his cries will fall on deaf ears. By the end of it, Augustus will pray for the Hungry One to consume him, if only so it will end._

_Four down._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is so much more i have for this au and for this series, but this is the end for now <3


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